


put some color in your cheeks (here on these Parisian streets)

by dipandpip



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Sexual Content, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers, both dnp are based elsewhere but they're still british
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 19:20:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15825306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dipandpip/pseuds/dipandpip
Summary: Dan's an up-and-coming ballet dancer in New York, hopelessly romantic and newly single. When he travels to the City of Love for work, he meets Phil, the principal dancer at the Paris Opera with a broken arm and a big heart.Pining, Parisian coffee shop visits, and heated debates on Tchaikovsky ensue.





	put some color in your cheeks (here on these Parisian streets)

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so so much to [kay](http://kay-okays.tumblr.com/) and [tilly](https://twitter.com/syrupyphil?lang=en) for beta-reading and just being really kind in general

Dan’s legs ache. Really, his whole body does, but particularly his lower half feels like it’s being held together by elastics that refuse to give.

He figures he can blame the guy in front of him on the plane last night who thought it was okay to recline his seat _all_ the way back, forcing Dan’s legs into an awkward angle for the better half of the flight from New York to Paris. However he knows the stiffness probably has more to do with the past week of rigorous rehearsals that have put both his body and his will to go on through the wringer.

Because of course his soloist debut with the company had to be performing one of the most technically challenging ballets ever choreographed _in the Paris Opera House_. Just thinking about it made him nervous. Like he was doing now.

_Ow._

A particularly tender spot he’s kneading on his calf makes him come to, wincing against the pain. He can faintly hear the early morning sounds of the city through the oval, wood-paneled windows lining the perimeter of the circular room, and can definitely hear Ronan arguing about something. Again.

“I just wanna know why it sounds like Stravinsky just made this score up as he went. It’s like, the musical equivalent of a cat dying.”

She’s sitting across from him in the small space between the wall and the barre, backdropped by one of the middle windows overlooking the summer-soaked Parisian landscape. They’d only just arrived at the rehearsal space, so her long black hair was still down, partly obstructing her sharp profile as she leaned over to lace up her pointe shoes. She’d made it clear since the start that she wasn’t very fond of the music in _Agon_ despite being a principal dancer in the production. Anything for the job, Dan supposed.

“That’s the point, though,” Adonis’ baritone voice sounds from above Dan as he sets his leg up on the higher of the two barres, thigh muscle contracting as he stretches to touch his chin to the bottom of his knee cap, fingers interlacing behind his foot. His arm muscles ripple with the strain under the light from outside, his white shirt sharply contrasting with his dark expanse of skin. Having been named after the god of eternal youth and desire, he sure lived up to it. Dan was pretty sure everyone in the company had the hots for him.

Dan watches as he turns his head sideways to rest his cheek on top of his knee, looking down and over at Ronan.

“Organized chaos and stuff, keeps it exciting,” he contends.

“There’s nothing exciting about not knowing what count you’re on in an overly syncopated mess,” she retaliates through the bobby pin clenched between her teeth, twirling her ponytail around in a circle on top of her head.

Dan just laughs to himself as he rolls his black tights down from their scrunched position below his knee and grabs the back of his foot, pulling his toes towards himself. Ronan loved to be contrary and sometimes it was annoying, but mostly it was just funny to him.

“Maybe you’re just uncultured, Ronan,” Dan pretends to reason, attempting to move his leg out of the line of fire. He fails, and she connects the box of her shoe against his shin in one swift motion, causing him to wince.

“Ow.”

“It’s not about culture, it’s about ears and having them you twat.”

Dan just smiles and shakes his head, looking down to adjust the straps of his flats.

This was his happy place. The fifteen minutes or so before rehearsal to loosen up before the inevitable stress of the day came, before the expectation to be perfect hit him like a ton of bricks. He loved dancing, more than anything really, but it wasn’t always kind to that prevailing part of him that craved constant validation from both himself and others. The latter was usually fulfilled, all little comments spoken in conversation from teachers and parents and classmates who mused about how beautiful his dancing was, but somehow it was never enough for that voice in his head, his own nagging critic that continually loves to tell him how crap he is. It’s almost a masochistic act, choosing to dance with an already natural tendency to self sabotage. He does it anyway, though, because somewhere in it is a bright, enduring joy like he’s never felt. It’s just sometimes hard to find that joy in anywhere but the blissful minutes before class starts.

Those blissful fifteen minutes were starting to turn into a blissful twenty, though. And then thirty. Dan turns his wrist towards him to eye an imaginary watch.

“Guess we can all go home now?” Adonis manages to get out before the click of one of the double doors adjacent to them echoes through the space.

Who walks through is definitely not the ancient artistic director who was supposed to be there half an hour ago, but rather a shaggy-haired twenty-something guy in an arm sling. Dan immediately recognizes him from the cover of one of the brochures lining the front desk of the _palais_.

“Ah… Uh, _bonjour tout le monde_ , my name’s Phil.”

He does a sort of stiff wave in their direction with his free hand as he sets his shoulder bag down on the far side of the room. Dan notes his awful attempt at a French accent. It’s somehow endearing.

“My good friend Monsieur Petrov’s unfortunately stuck in traffic, so he asked me to fill in for warm-up today,” he explains through a slight smile, garnering a breathy laugh from the room. Leave it to their director to drive a rental when there was perfectly adequate public transport. Phil laughs along.

“I personally think anyone who willingly drives around here is a sort of masochist, but that's beside the point...” he trails off as he waves his hand dismissively, making his way over diagonally to the piano to hand the music sheets over to the pianist with a friendly _here you go_ and placing himself at the tail end of the barre.

“All right, let’s get started, shall we?”

Dan can see Ronan cocking her head in his direction out of his peripherals and he can guess why. Phil’s cute. Like, _super_ cute. Really he already knew this from skimming the company directory earlier that day, eyeing his tiny headshot listed under _étoile_ \- the French equivalent to principal dancer. His name - Phil Lester - had stood out like a sore thumb amongst the others he couldn’t pronounce, and he found himself intrigued by his wide eyes and broad shoulders. They also shared awful emo fringes, which amused him. Soulmates in questionable life choices, Adonis had deemed them.

Seeing him now, in the flesh from the shoulders down, only adds to his attractiveness. Dan can’t help but watch the way his jeans strain against the back of his thighs when he drops down into a _plié_ , the way his back muscles tense through his t-shirt when his arm transitions from first to second position, his neck impossibly long with the way it moves this way and that. His form’s perfect despite being unable to use his other arm to balance himself. Dan’s too busy checking him out to feel self-conscious about his own abilities.

He doesn’t even realize he’s spacing out until he hears the beginning notes of a sequence spilling from the piano. Phil had been demonstrating during his haze.

He clears his throat and quickly grips one hand on the wooden barre, getting into a sloppy first position barely in time for the first motion. He hears Ronan snort behind him. He really needs to get out of his head sometimes.

Music resounds through the space, airy notes mixed with loud, bassy ones that Dan can feel in his heart as he starts to settle into a rhythm.

“Nice, nice,” Phil quietly encourages towards them after a few bars as he saunters around the center space, a little awkwardly. Dan watches him out of the corner of his eye and can tell that he doesn’t really know where to settle himself, his strides confident but aimless. His free hand reaches up to swipe at his dark fringe a couple of times. Dan’s focus is anywhere but the exercise.

After a few minutes and a lot of side eyes on Dan’s part, Phil’s wandering steps take him a little closer to where Dan’s positioned on the barre. He can feel Phil’s eyes on him. He doesn’t know why he’s so nervous.

“What’s your name?”

The words surprise him, so much so that he loses count for a second as he looks over to Phil, whose eyes shine impossibly green in the light. Despite Phil’s friendly expression, the question spirals Dan into a panic.

_Oh god fuck he’s going to tell me I’m crap he thinks I’m such shit he-_

“Uh, Dan, it’s Dan,” he manages to blurt out, trying to sync his motions back up with the music.

“Dan, you’re a little tense.”

“Oh.”

He notices his shoulders angled upwards, edging close to his ears. He quickly brings them down and widens out his back, his position a little exaggerated. Apparently every last ounce of his technique turns to shite in the presence of a cute boy.

“Yeah, that’s it, good,” Phil says with a smile, taking a few seconds to just look at Dan before abruptly clearing his throat and turning around on his heels, a little unnaturally.

Dan doesn’t seem to notice any abnormality though, too distracted by his own mind.

 -

The rest of the warm up goes by fast, cut short due to starting later. Phil cracks jokes here and there, trying to wake everyone up and raise some much needed spirits. It was 7:30 in the morning after all.

By the time they’re done, everyone loves him.

“Alright, well this was a pleasure,” Phil starts as people begin to gather their belongings, voice reverberating loudly against the metal walls.

“I’ve been told to send you in the direction of the stage and to not do anything stupid, so do at least one of those things, and hopefully I’ll catch everyone later. I’m always available for coffee. Really, always.”

He lifts up his injured arm a bit and motions towards it with his other hand, a vaguely sad smile painting his angular face. Dan wonders how it happened. Maybe if the chance arrived he could take him up on that coffee deal and ask him, perhaps share more stories while they’re at it and learn about each other’s interests and talk for hours and memorize the lines and shadows and colors of each other’s faces until the sun sets over the _Sacré-Cœur_ …

 _Geez_.

Something about Paris makes him even more of a sap than usual. It embarrasses him a little, the way his imagination conjures up all these glorified romantics and clichés for a stranger, but he can’t fault himself too much for it. It’s been awhile since he was able to be excited about someone new, totally unknown and yet to be explored, a blank slate he knows nothing about. Up until a month ago, he’d been holding on to a three-year dwindling love with Claire, his girlfriend, trying to light a match with no fuse, attempting to rekindle something he wasn’t excited about anymore. The dates stopped first, then the _I love you’s_ , until they rarely spoke, nothing left between them but a sort of shared animosity towards one another over not being able to make things work out. The end came with heartbreak, of course, he’d loved her after all, but there was some relief in the fact that they could finally move on and grow into themselves as adults.

And part of that growing up had been embracing his sexuality. Back when he was with Claire, the way he felt towards men could only ever manifest itself as silly, romantic fantasies in his head, painfully out of reach. But now, with nothing holding him back and being surrounded by people who didn’t care who he liked, the possibility of more is there. But only the possibility, after all, and an unlikely one at that. The small chance excites him as much as it scares him shitless, having never been with a guy.

He knows projecting his hopeless fantasies on to someone he barely knows is almost a sure-fire path to disappointment, but he really can’t bring himself to stop.

He’s thinking, slinging his bag over his shoulder and bending over at the hips to grab his water bottle by the handle when he feels a familiar poke at his side. He turns and is met with Ronan next to him, a sly smile spread across her face, lips slightly upturned. Dan grumbles a bit and rolls his eyes. He can already guess she’s going to say some sort of sarcastic comment about how flustered he’d gotten.

“Don’t you just _hate_ it when the hunky principal dancer checks you out in class?” she questions.

He’d guessed wrong.

“What on Earth are you on about?” Dan asks back, voice wavering slightly as they start walking towards the exit, Adonis joining him on his other side. Ronan has to be taking the piss.

She looks at him like he just spoke another language.

“Dan, really? Are you blind? He gave you the most shameless up and down I’ve ever seen,” she says at a volume higher than he would’ve liked. He glances over to Phil, who’s shuffling papers together atop the piano and looking up periodically to say goodbye to people as they walk past. Dan knows he can’t hear them, but he still shushes Ronan.

“You are so bloody loud. Also you’re crazy. Adonis, tell her she’s crazy.”

Dan looks over pleadingly towards him and is only met with a shrug.

“I was facing the other way, so I dunno. You guys could’ve shagged right then and there for all I know.”

Dan lets out a huff of defeat. Adonis may be beautiful, but he was really unhelpful.

“Would I lie to you?” Ronan asks.

They pass the piano in a crowd of a few other people and are almost out the doors when Dan opens his mouth to reply, but he’s interrupted by someone calling his name from a few feet behind. Stopping in his tracks and turning around, he sidesteps the influx of people in his way before he matches the voice to a face.

It’s Phil.

He does a sort of funny jog towards Dan, resembling a lopsided rabbit with his slung arm. Dan turns around for a beat, seeing the back of Ronan’s head disappear into the hall. Phil’s eyes light up a bit when their gazes meet again.

“Hey, sorry, I just wanted to apologize for signaling you out at the beginning, I just know it’s easy to space out and I didn’t want your shoulders to hurt during rehearsal because I know how much that sucks,” he seems to say all at once, his slender fingers fidgeting with one of his belt loops. He shifts his weight a little.

“Oh, it’s no big deal. Thank you, really,” Dan manages to get out, his voice breaking a little. Because of course it had to.

“All right good, was just making sure.”

Dan nods and smiles, acknowledging the gesture. Phil smiles back. A few seconds pass. Phil absentmindedly scratches the space behind his earlobe. Dan racks his brain for something, anything, to say or do. He could ask Phil about so many things, about his job, about Paris, about the fucking weather, even. Anything that could mimic normal human conversation. But all he does is let the silence continue, feet planted to the spot, temporarily paralyzed by an irrational fear of saying the wrong thing. He’s so bad at this.

The appropriate thing to do now would be to just say goodbye and walk away, it’s been way too long of a pause, but neither of them make a move to do it automatically. Dan notes Phil’s similar loss for words and can’t help but think back to what Ronan told him.

_What if he likes me?_

He brushes the thought away. They’re probably both just awkward as hell, and Phil might’ve actually _just_ been checking Dan’s form when he looked at him. Probably. And besides, Dan doesn’t even know if Phil’s into guys.

“Uh, well,” Phil breaks the silence first, eyes diverting from Dan’s brown ones for a few seconds to look at the green linoleum floor beside him, “Hope to see you sometime soon, Dan?”

He asks it like a question, a hope. He’s already starting to walk backwards towards the piano, eyes focused on Dan.

“Yeah, of course!” Dan exclaims a little too enthusiastically. He gets way too friendly when he’s nervous. Why is he so nervous?

He does a wave similar to the one Phil greeted the class with, short and stifled, before turning his back to him and walking towards the doors, head down and mind racing.

A part of him’s hellbent on not getting his hopes up, sticking to the cynicism he knows best, going the comfortable route of avoidance, letting his fantasies be fantasies. But as he opens the doors and walks out into the carpeted hallway, he can’t help but smile, feeling his heart pick up a bit with an excitement he can’t quite place.

Why is he crushing so hard on someone he’s barely spoken two sentences to?

He really doesn’t know, but what he does know is that he wants to seem him again. Maybe for a mocha or two, if he’d ask.

And maybe as soon as humanly possible.

**Author's Note:**

> i update every tuesday!
> 
> come say hi on [tumblr](http://dipnpips.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/dipandpip?lang=en)!
> 
> also here's a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud8zVcHPnuM) of _Agon_ to get a feel for the music and the dancing they're doing


End file.
